As well as directing Britain’s war effort, Winston Churchill had another seemingly crucial matter to attend to during the second world war – the appointment of a new provost of Eton College.
Four months after the 1944 D-day landings and less than a month after the failed operation by British airborne troops to secure the Rhine crossing at Arnhem, the prime minister found himself presented with the shock resignation of the incumbent provost, Lord Quickswood.
Under Eton’s statute, the provost – who heads the board of governors known as the fellows – is appointed by the sovereign on the advice of the prime minister of the day. Files released by the National Archives show how successive prime ministers were required to consider the administration of the UK’s most exclusive private school.
Anthony Bevir, a No 10 official who advised on appointments, wrote to Churchill: “There is no precedent for a resignation of a provost within recent memory, except that of Dr Warre who was too old and ill, and the resignation had to be arranged by motion of the fellows and the visitor of college.
“I have however discussed the matter with the authorities and it seems clear that the king’s permission is required though there need be no formal submission. May I therefore write to Sir Alan Lascelles [George VI’s private secretary] and ask for the king’s approval?”
It seems there was a plan to offer the post – which came with a house in the college grounds – to Lord Gowrie, an ex-soldier and former governor of South Australia, but this had fallen through because he was not a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge.
So in January 1945, with continued heavy fighting in Europe and the far east, Bevir asked whether Churchill would be prepared to allow the name of the vice-provost, Sir Henry Martens – a former tutor to the future Queen Elizabeth – to go forward instead.
“I think the governing body would take it hard if you pressed them to amend the statute in order to make Lord Gowrie provost, much though they must respect his character,” he wrote.
There was a further commotion in 1964 when the Sunday Telegraph reported that the then provost, Sir Claude Elliott, was resigning and that the permanent head of the Foreign Office, Sir Harold Caccia, was lined up to succeed him.
The No 10 appointments secretary, John Hewitt, informed the prime minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, that he had sought to assure Elliott that the information had not leaked from Downing Street.
“Sir Claude has written to say that he was greatly surprised and annoyed when he saw this article and he agrees that the information must clearly have come from someone who knows a great deal, although he can make no sort of guess as to who it was,” he wrote.
Apparently alarmed, Douglas-Home replied: “Sir H Caccia mentioned it. However occurred to me that he wouldn’t accept. Had I better see him?”
